Having Their Noses Rubbed In It

In a comment to a post by Bitey, Koshersalaami asks:

“But why is it different? Why did the Floyd killing accomplish what the Garner killing didn’t?”

It’s different because of the sheer length of the video that depicts the absolute horror of the murder of an unarmed black man by a white cop and three uniformed accomplices.

Most people can’t or won’t stand in one place for more than three minutes.

This is 8 minutes and 46 seconds of a real live murder committed by someone who is sworn to protect and serve.

Due to the pandemic, the video was seen by a captive, homebound, audience who would ordinarily have escaped exposure to the stark obscenity of a brutal police street execution.

There are people who still can’t, or won’t, believe what the video requires them to witness. They’ll be in the jury pool needing to be weeded out by the pretrial process of ‘voir dire’.

White folks are accustomed to ignoring reports of such incidents, or denying the validity and veracity of the complaints and grievances that arise from such occurrences.

But then,  it has always been black people who are aggrieved and doing the complaining….

Not this time…

Black people aren’t alone in seeking redress this time….

White Americans have been forced to see themselves and their hypocrisy in a way that runs contrary to everything they’ve been taught to believe about themselves and the country they live in.

No other video recording has managed to do this the way the one shot by Darnella Frazier has.

Many, for the first time, have been required to see themselves as black people see them….They not only don’t like what they see, they don’t like the idea that black people and the rest of humanity can see it as well.

White people are not comfortable with being confronted with the clear unambiguous and undeniable truth about the more than 400 years of their systemic racism and societal hypocrisy and denial….

It seems that finally, in this moment of being forced to see and face the truth about themselves, white people are coming to the realization that it is they who must put an end to this shit….

…And none of them are too happy about having their noses rubbed in it.

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